Well, finally! After a dearth of new and exciting bands innerpartysystem come along and restore my faith in new music. For all its initial down sides (major label, American background, hyperbolic PR) “Die Tonight Live Forever” does the one thing that a jaded reviewer can’t fault: it surprises me.
Okay, granted, this is one song (and adding a butchered radio edit is a travesty of promotion) and, granted, the b-sides aren’t new songs but pointless remixes… but there’s still a stab of something vital here.
Bursting with a pounding electro-rock sound and utilising both treated and untreated vocals combined with scorching verses, innerpartysystem confound expectations and slow the mood just where a gigantic chorus would usually be. It’s innovation of a small kind but, adding to the feral prowling keyboards and white noise guitars, it feels both experimental and powerful.
The beat is a solid and supremely basic ‘dum-chuk, dum-chuk’ but what innerpartysystem layer over the top is frighteningly exhilarating. Electro-rock hasn’t really had a house band to compare it to. Introverts Nine Inch Nails don’t produce rousing choruses or dancefloor fillers of this calibre; multi-nationalists KMFDM deserve a mention but tend to explore a variety of musical genres (Germanic electro-jazz anyone?) which has always scuppered them from becoming standard bearers; Marilyn Manson’s frequent flirtations with electro-rock miss the dance-friendly beats and soaring vocals of “Die Tonight Live Forever”.
So I am forced to look to homegrown talent to see the progenitors of this hurricane sound. Innerpartysystem are Gloucestershire’s storming Chaos Engine with a marketing budget, Bristol’s Katscan without the Marilyn Manson fixation, Goteki with a fine singer. “Die Tonight Live Forever” is darkwave electro-rock of the finest variety and I’m looking forward to hearing the album.
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Posted in Music reviews |
Tags: Die Tonight Live Forever, electro-rock, electronic, industrial, innerpartysystem
September 23rd, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Do my eyes deceive me? Duncan, have you just given someone a *positive* review?!?!